A facile one-step approach for the fabrication of polypyrrole nanowire/carbon fiber hybrid electrodes for flexible high performance solid-state supercapacitors

Abstract

Wearable electronics are in high demand, requiring that all the components are flexible. Here we report a facile approach for the fabrication of flexible polypyrrole nanowire (NPPy)/carbon fiber (CF) hybrid electrodes with high electrochemical activity using a low-cost, one-step electrodeposition method. The structure of the NPPy/CF electrodes can be easily controlled by the applied electrical potential and electrodeposition time. Our NPPy/CF-based electrodes showed high flexibility, conductivity, and stability, making them ideal for flexible all-solid-state fiber supercapacitors. The resulting NPPy/CF-based supercapacitors provided a high specific capacitance of 148.4 F g at 0.128 A g, which is much higher than for supercapacitors based on polypyrrole film/CF (38.3 F g) and pure CF (0.6 F g) under the same conditions. The NPPy/CF-based supercapacitors also showed high bending and cycling stability, retaining 84% of the initial capacitance after 500 bending cycles, and 91% of the initial capacitance after 5000 charge/discharge cycles.

A Review on Nano-/Microstructured Materials Constructed by Electrochemical Technologies for Supercapacitors

“…One-dimensional (1D) conducting polymers, such as polyaniline nanofibers [ 145 – 147 ] and polypyrrole nanorods [ 148 – 150 ], are popular morphologies of pseudocapacitor electrodes. Their merits include the wide-open interfiber space that facilitates electrolyte infiltration and ion diffusion, as well as minimizes dead volumes (materials that are unusable for charge storage).…”

Novel mesoporous electrode materials for symmetric, asymmetric and hybrid supercapacitors

“…By using such flexible electrodes, flexible and wearable supercapacitors can be developed which is mandatory for powering the futuristic flexible and wearable electronic devices. Examples for the nanocomposite electrodes used in supercapacitors are carbon/carbon nanocomposites, carbon nanomaterial/electronically conducting polymer nanocomposites, carbon nanomaterial/transition metal-oxide nanocomposites, transition metal-nitride/carbon nanomaterial nanocomposites, etc [5,[37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44].…”

“…Batteries are well established for fulfilling the energy needs for the electronic devices for the past many decades, but their low power density and cycle life remains a great challenge [4]. On the other hand, electrochemical capacitors or supercapacitors have been developed to tackle the issue of power density, but they suffer from low energy density [5][6][7]. Recently, considerable research effort has been focused on developing novel supercapacitors that can have both high energy density and power density [8][9][10][11].…”

Template‐free electrochemically polymerized polypyrrole nanowires and their application in flexible solid‐state supercapacitors

“…Recently, PPy with various nanostructures grown on flexible substrates have been explored as electrode materials for flexible supercapacitors 15–18 . Nanostructured PPy has a high specific surface area, which can pave the way for charge accumulation and ion diffusion, hence improving the capacity of supercapacitors 18 .…”

“…Recently, PPy with various nanostructures grown on flexible substrates have been explored as electrode materials for flexible supercapacitors 15–18 . Nanostructured PPy has a high specific surface area, which can pave the way for charge accumulation and ion diffusion, hence improving the capacity of supercapacitors 18 . Especially, many efforts have been made to establish PPy nanowires, such as template polymerization, 19 self‐assembly, 20 interfacial polymerization 21 and electrochemical polymerization 22 .…”